Latest News
April 2019
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29 Apr 2019The deadly parasite Leishmania has been traveling the world for millions of years, catching flights between humans, dogs and other animals throughout history and causing an untold number of deaths. Now, scientists at the University of Dundee are inviting the public to step inside the Para-site-seeing: Departure Lounge to see how humans are fighting back.
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26 Apr 2019Dr Stephen Kelley has joined the School as a lecturer in pharmacology as part of the D’Arcy Thompson Unit. Stephen has built up extensive research and teaching experience through-out his career at institutions in the US and UK.
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23 Apr 2019Alan Prescott has been awarded third place in the annual British Society for Cell Biology (BSCB) image competition. His confocal image is of a cultured mouse embryo fibroblast from the mito-QC mouse. Mitochondria express both eGFP and mCherry but in lysosomes the eGFP, green fluorescence is quenched. Bright red dots are mitolysosomes. The nucleus is DAPI stained, blue. The image features in the Journal of Cell Biology publication from Ian Ganley's lab (McWilliams et al., (2016) JCB, 214(3).
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19 Apr 2019Latest research from Professor Kim Dale and collaborators has uncovered further knowledge into the developmental segmentation process which may also impact on our understanding of diseases such as cancer. This research was published this week in EMBO Reports.
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17 Apr 2019Researchers from the Division of Cell Signalling and Immunology in the School have shown that a drug previously used to treat Type 2 diabetes could potentially be used to protect against cancer. A study carried out by Professors Grahame Hardie and Doreen Cantrell has shown that the drug phenformin protects mice against a type of cancer called T-cell lymphoma. It does this by switching on the protein AMPK, which was first defined by Professor Hardie in the 1980s. Subsequent research at Dundee showed a link between AMPK and cancer.
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17 Apr 2019One of the most prevalent cancer-causing genes or “oncogenes” is called PI3KCA. Damaging changes or “mutations” in this oncogene are found in many cancers including cancers of the breast, colon, brain, liver, stomach and lung. Understanding how cancer-causing genes such as PIK3CA change the behaviour of our cells is key to developing new therapies for cancer patients.
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15 Apr 2019Hannah Tovell an Alessi lab PhD student working closely with the Ciulli lab has published an improved HaloPROTAC method to induce post–translational knockdown of endogenous proteins. This approach makes use of CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technology to introduce a Halo tag onto the N or C terminus of any desired target protein that can then be targeted for degradation by a HaloPROTAC probe (see Figure).
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11 Apr 2019Professor Kate Storey has been awarded the Waddington Medal by the British Society for Developmental Biology. The Waddington Medal is the only national award in Developmental Biology. It honours outstanding research performance as well as services to the subject community. The medal is awarded annually at the BSDB Spring Meeting, where the recipient presents the Waddington Medal Lecture. Professor Storey is Head of the Division of Cell & Developmental Biology and Chair of Neural Development in the School of Life Sciences at Dundee.
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05 Apr 2019Following the destruction of lab space by the fire at Biomedical Sciences Building at the University of St Andrews, 8 researchers from the groups of David Hughes and Rick Randall will be accommodated within Gene Regulation and Expression in the School.
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05 Apr 2019In a new study, researchers from the University of Copenhagen and EMBL in Heidelberg have learned how a specific genetic mutation affects the maturation of blood cells in mouse models. Leukaemia patients often have a mutation in this gene, often seen before the disease sets in. The researchers are working on a strategy for treating the mutation.
